Methods and systems for creating a synthetic surrogate fitness function. User decisions are received representing fitness for a plurality of solutions. A partial ordering of the plurality of solutions is provided based on the received user decisions, wherein at least some of the plurality of solutions are represented to have a greater relative fitness than other of the plurality of solutions. A complete order of at least the plurality of solutions is induced based on the normalized partial ordering. A synthetic surrogate fitness function is generated using the induced complete order.